With GitHub, Microsoft is buying a crucial part of the software ecosystem | Tech News

On the lead-up to Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, its former nemesis has announced what may be the biggest software news of the week: Microsoft is buying GitHub in an all-stock deal worth $7.5 billion.

GitHub is one of the most essential tools used by software developers today. So if the deal closes — as Microsoft expects it to this year — Microsoft would be rolling up a crucial part of the ecosystem.

From the smallest startups to giants like Microsoft, companies use the cloud-based service to work on code collaboratively. GitHub has more than 27 million software developers working on more than 85 million repositories of code, according to a Microsoft blog post.

So it seems like a natural acquisition for the new Microsoft, which under CEO Satya Nadella has increased its focus on serving software developers via cloud services — whether they’re coding for Microsoft Windows or not. In the case of GitHub, it’s used for everything from websites to iPhoneapps.

“The era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge is upon us,” Nadella wrote in a blog post. “Computing is becoming embedded in the world, with every part of our daily life and work and every aspect of our society and economy being transformed by digital technology. Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.”